


Grief

by Defira



Series: Daughter of Ryloth [1]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Knights of the Eternal Throne Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8726125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: Odessen has been saved, but good souls were lost in the fight to defend it. A great evil has been vanquished, but not everyone came out of the war intact. The Commander of the Alliance grieves, and no one quite knows how to help her- except for her most unlikely ally.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is completely non-canon to my main swtor universe but I finished my test run of KotET and I had a lot of anger and sobbing I had to work out through fic. 
> 
> If you play as a female bounty hunter who was married to Torian, and you lost him in chapter eight, the game doesn't acknowledge in any way that you just lost your husband. There's no extra dialogue, no letters (you get the generic letters, the same as everyone else), and your other BH companions don't comment on his passing. I was livid and heartbroken. Fic happened.
> 
> Trigger warning for off-screen animal death, for a religious ceremony. The death is not described or witnessed by the POV character, but please use caution

The Commander was acting strangely. 

Well, no more strange than normal, perhaps- quiet and withdrawn since the events of the Battle of Odessen, never speaking up in crowds and never seeking out the activities in the cantina, it was entirely easy to overlook her when she seemed to just ghost through the hallways. But she seemed to have more purpose than she had done in this past week, and she was seen talking to several members of the Alliance more than once. 

She was seen speaking to Vette in the smuggler’s hangar, their conversation confusing for those who overheard snippets of it. Vette herself seemed torn between enthusiasm and hesitance, as if she wasn’t sure of her footing in the conversation. 

“No, no, I know people back home who can get that,” she was heard to say. “Do you know what size you are?” 

“I can give you my measurements if it helps them make a better fit.” 

“Sure, that’d help.” 

From there she was seen talking with Hylo about their supply chain, with specific questions about procuring live animals.

“A rycrit?” Hylo said dubiously, looking up from her caf. “As in, like, you wanna get a herd going here?”

Kol’aya shook her head. “Just one. A calf, a healthy one.” 

“You know, most people want a midnight snack, they just go down to the cantina.” 

She was later seen down in the laboratories, speaking to Doctor Oggorubb about anyone on staff who might be able to help her with a crafting project. 

“And you say you need ten of these rings, Commander?”

“That’s right. Nothing fancy, they don’t need carvings or etchings or anything.” 

“Fascinating.” 

Nothing came of it all immediately, and the curiosity of her actions was soon forgotten in the general day to day hubbub of the Alliance- until a shipping crate arrived with a bleating rycrit calf within it, its wails drawing a curious crowd as the Commander put a leash on it and led it across the bridge to the field that housed her ship. She tethered it to a tree, and left it with a bowl of water, and before long it was happily grazing in the overgrown grass and rolling around in the dirt. 

A few days after that, Vette was seen going to the Commander’s quarters with a large box, the sort one might keep a garment in. 

Kol’aya politely refused any offers of help in caring for the rycrit calf, and smiled almost uneasily whenever anyone asked if they could pat it. Vette started to run interference at that point, gravitating towards the ramp out to the bridge and finding reasons to waste her time out there instead; when asked what was going on, she found a dozen things to talk about that had nothing to do with the original question.

Shae Vizla was a familiar face in the military bay, and at some point she began to keep Vette company. An odd pairing, to be sure, but no one thought twice about it. 

The Commander abruptly informed her war council that she would be unavailable on the following day, to the dismay of Lana- who liked to schedule things down to the minute- and to the frustration of Jorgan and Aygo, who had active operations in the field, and to lose their commanding officer without warning threw them somewhat into chaos. Kol’aya ignored the queries and the complaints, her expression blank and unseeing as she waited for the annoyances to die down; she never explained why she needed the day off. 

The following day, as the sun broke over the canyon walls, golden beams streaming down against the stone, and Kol’aya appeared. She was dressed in a long white gown, unadorned and unembroidered, and her feet were bare as she made her way through the base in silence. She carried a tray before her, which held a bone knife, four bowls- two of which were empty, one of which appeared to be full of salt crystals and the last of which appeared to be full of vividly red sand- and ten plain white rings set at even intervals on the surface. Her peculiar appearance drew more than a little attention, but she ignored the murmurs that grew in her wake, and the stares that followed her as she walked in silence. 

Vette was there at the bridge again, fidgeting awkwardly and similarly dressed in all white. She still had shoes on, however, and she didn’t appear to be dressed in any sort of ceremonial affair like Kol’aya was. Shae was there too, fully armoured, and at Kol’aya’s approach she saluted, her fist rapping on the metal chestplate as she called a word in mandoa’a. The word was echoed in a shout by every Mandalorian in the hangar bay, startling the unsuspecting onlookers, and Kol’aya bowed her head to Shae in something that looked like thanks. 

By now the whole affair had drawn quite a crowd, but no one dared to follow her across the bridge, where she untied the rycrit calf from the tree and led it over to the small pond on the far side of the field. 

“What on earth is she doing?” Lana asked, to no one in particular.

Stunningly, the person who answered was Arcann. “She’s grieving,” he said quietly, but his voice carried enough for a good number of people to turn away from the sight of Kol’aya to look at him instead.

Theron rubbed at the back of his neck. “I dunno about you guys, but when I need to deal with something upsetting me, I usually tend to go to a bar, and not... you know... shipping in a wild animal.” 

Vette made a noise that sounded like she was trying not to cry, but she held fast at her place at the end of the bridge. Since she seemed to be unable to answer Theron’s question without crumbling, Arcann continued. “She is twi’lek,” he said, almost tiredly. “She observes the mourning rituals of her people, to honour her husband.”

“Stars,” Koth muttered from somewhere nearby, and he looked almost gaunt as he stared at the speck of white on the far side of the field. 

“We should have done something for her before now,” Lana said, dawning horror in her voice.

Arcann glanced over at her. “Yes,” he said bluntly. “You should have.” 

“She didn’t say anything!” 

“Then let her have her privacy- since she didn’t see fit to share her grief with you all, she clearly didn’t feel comfortable expressing it to you.” 

Koth in particular seemed rather stricken by such a statement, but the overwhelming emotion in the hangar bay was one of guilt. She’d carried her pain in secret, and none of them had bothered to check in with her once, to ask how she fared after watching her husband die in front of her. All of them had assumed that she was strong enough, that she didn’t need the time or the space to be hurt and be broken by her grief.

He could relate to that. 

“White is the colour of death and mourning in Rylothian culture,” he found himself saying, to no one in particular. “The colour of bones bleached dry and lifeless by the heat-storms that roll across the plains. She wears white to inform her kin that she is lifeless while she grieves, that death has taken life from her.” 

No one interrupted him, and he found himself inclined to continue. “The rycrit calf is a symbol of the blessing from her goddess, the creature that sustains the people of Ryloth through even the worst of famines, and that survives despite the horrors that plague the surface. She will offer the calf to the goddess, in exchange for the care and guidance of her husband’s spirit in the worlds beyond.” 

“Boss never struck me as a particularly religious type,” the Devaronian named Gault said with a drawl.

“She lost her husband, stars sake, she’s allowed to grieve however she kriffin’ wants,” Koth snapped. 

“Yeah, but most people just throw a few credits in the collection bowl, not wander off to slaughter a baby animal in a field.” 

There was a sparkling crackle, and Gault yelped; the small Jawa ducked out from behind his legs a moment later, some kind of crude electrical device held in his hands. Gault scowled down at him, rubbing at his thigh where he’d shocked him, but didn’t say anything more. 

Arcann felt someone move to his side, and glanced down to find his mother there. Her eyes were grief-stricken and dark with pain as she stared across the canyon towards the distant figure of their Commander, and he knew she was thinking of everything they had lost as well. Of Thexan and Vaylin, and the grief they had not had time to process. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she leaned her head against him. 

“She will pray over the rycrit as she offers it to the goddess, and when she cuts the throat she will catch the blood in one of the bowls.” There was no bleating to be heard from the creature anymore, so he had to assume she had already gone ahead with that step. “The other bowls hold salt, water and soil from Ryloth.” 

“You know an awful lot about twi’leki mourning rituals,” Theron said, almost suspiciously. 

Arcann stared flatly at him, until Theron looked away guiltily. “I wanted to know more about the individual my father had singled out,” he said. “One of the most obvious steps was to make sure I was well versed in her culture.” 

“Sure, because that’s not at all creepy.”

“I seem to know more about the obvious fact that she needs to grieve for her husband than any of you, so I’d say it was time well spent.”

“She had rings,” Koth interrupted, and Arcann glanced at him. He’d heard rumours around the base that Koth and Kol’aya had been close for a time, before she’d been reunited with her husband. He wondered if the pilot was hoping to rekindle their dalliance now that Torian was gone, then berated himself for the unkindness of that thought. “What does she have rings for?”

Arcann breathed out slowly through his nose, collecting his thoughts. “There are ten rings, one for each month of the Rylothian calendar,” he said. “The contents of the four bowls represent the fundamental pillars of life on Ryloth- the gift of water, the gift of salt, the gift of earth, and the gift of blood. The rings, carved from bone, represent death.”

“Well that’s charmingly creepy,” Gault muttered behind them. 

“Over each ring,” he continued, ignoring the Devaronian, “she says a blessing and a prayer, an acknowledgement of the time she had with the deceased. Her words imbue the bone, and it becomes a representation of the memory and the blessing. From there, she will immerse the rings in each bowl, one by one.”

He could just about see it in his mind, her slender yellow fingers not even shaking as she went through the ritual. “First to the water, the seed which allows life on Ryloth to flourish to begin with. The first and greatest gift of the goddess.” She’d hold the ring beneath the surface of the bowl, letting the cold of the water she’d drawn from the pond soak into the bone. “From there to the salt, that which sustains and protects against the fierce heat of the deserts and the storms.”

The water would drip from her fingers as she lifted the ring free, little droplets splattering onto the tray as she moved to the second bowl. The salt crystals would cling to her damp skin, as she rolled the ring around, letting it coat the bone entirely. 

“The third bowl is the blood, the literal representation of life itself, strengthened and sustained by the water and the salt that came before.” The blood would be warm as she dipped the ring into it, slightly thick between her fingers. “The blood will stain the bone, beginning to turn it red, and it will no longer be lifeless.” 

The hangar was silent, and it actually surprised him that everyone was listening to him. They were all watching her across the canyon, but they all listened. 

“The final bowl contains soil from Ryloth,” he said. “Red sand, so bright and vivid that it inevitably stains any fabric it comes into contact with. Rich with minerals and said to be so vibrant in hue because the colour comes from the blood of the goddess herself. She wept when Ryloth could not produce life, and her tears became the waters, and where the heat seared them away, they left salt in their wake. When that was not enough to bring life to the earth, she cut open her palms and let her blood spill onto the plains and the rocks, staining them bright red, and combining with her tears to birth the twi’lek people.”

Her fingers, already stained from the blood, would turn red upon contact with the soil. The ring, no longer clear white but now a vivid red, would roll about in the earth until dry. 

“She will do it ten times over,” he finished quietly. “Once for each ring, once for each month of the year their goddess blesses them with. Imbued with life and memory, she wears a ring on each finger until one by one, the colour fades again, and the bone turns white. Once all ten rings have turned white again, her mourning period will be over- life will have given way to death, and his spirit is safe in the arms of the goddess.” 

“She could’ve said something,” Koth said. “We would’ve, I dunno...”

Arcann raised his remaining eyebrow at him. “Yet none of you even seemed to realise she was in mourning to begin with,” he said, and he saw Theron flinch. “Did it occur to you that she didn’t feel comfortable asking, when none of you seemed to even want to acknowledge she was in pain?” 

“But she didn’t say anything!”

It frustrated him, the fact that so many of them seemed shocked to think that she might have been suffering, and the fact that their guilt made them twist it around to make it her fault. “Then maybe look to yourselves and ask why it is she didn’t feel she could trust you with her grief,” he said, his voice low and cold. 

The ritual was not something that could pass quickly, and as time went on and she did not reappear, the crowd began to lose interest, drifting back to their duties. Eventually the various leaders of the Alliance began to shake themselves, and berate their staff for wasting the better part of the day gawking, and Kol’aya’s audience slowly dispersed. Senya murmured her apologies at some point and pulled away, and he kissed his mother on the forehead as she returned his smile weakly. There was too much grief on her, too much pain, and he wasn’t going to press her to stay when she was so brittle and fragile. 

Neither of them had spoken about Vaylin’s death. Neither of them knew how. 

Eventually, it was only himself and Koth and Vette remaining, and neither of them spoke to him. The pilot didn’t like him, and that was fair enough- he wouldn’t like him, were their positions reversed. But Koth had friends, and people who cared about him, and after a time some of his crew came to find him, rambunctious as always. They were fairly pointed about avoiding him, and casting dirty looks in his direction, and as always he did his best to ignore them. 

Vette, too, didn’t seem inclined to want to draw their attention.

They drew him away, and he was left alone with Vette, dressed in white and so riddled with guilt and grief that it hurt to stand near to her. 

“I begged her,” Vette said suddenly, surprising him. He glanced at her, but she was staring across the bridge. The afternoon was creeping on, and the sky was beginning to take on a golden quality. “I was so scared, and I didn’t want to die, so I begged her to choose me.”

“I know,” he said. “I was there.” 

She laughed awkwardly, rubbing at the tears on her cheeks. “People don’t... folk don’t choose twi’leks. Especially not ones they’ve only met a little while ago.”

“Perhaps it has escaped your notice that she is twi’lek as well.”

She snorted. “You’re not supposed to have a sense of humour, you know.”

“I wasn’t aware there were rules for this sort of thing.”

“It’s right there in the rule book- big bad scary force users aren’t allowed to be funny, even redeemed ones.”

He eyed her with something approaching amusement. “I’ll have to peruse the archives then,” he said. “I don’t appear to have read that volume.”

Vette sniffed loudly. “I’m used to not being saved,” she said. “I’ve been a slave often enough that I know I’ve gotta rely on myself first and foremost.”

He hesitated, the words uncomfortable as they sat perched on the tip of his tongue. “You don’t have to apologise for surviving,” he said finally. 

Her expression was crestfallen when she looked at him. “I guess you’d be the authority on that,” she whispered. 

Just because it was true didn’t mean it didn’t hurt any less.

The golden rays of the afternoon lengthened into a dusky purple, and then the first stars were visible in the sky. The perimetre lights began to glow, brightening softly against the gloom, and Vette fidgeted nervously. “Do you suppose she’s okay?” she asked, peering out towards the far end of the field. 

“How long does the ceremony usually take?”

“There’s no set time, it's like, a personal thing.”

“Then she’s not necessarily late.”

Vette sighed. “I guess not,” she said reluctantly. “I just, I dunno. I wanna know that she’s okay, you know?” 

He looked over to the darkening field, to the faint blur of white that marked Kol’aya’s location. “Just go over and talk to her,” he said.

“No,” Vette said quickly, miserably; she tucked her arms around herself, like she was trying to hug herself. “No, I can’t. I just... I can’t.” 

She seemed to be on the verge of tears, and he sighed internally. “Go get some food,” he said, “I’ll check on her.”

Her eyes flicked nervously to his face. “Are you... I mean, you guys aren’t exactly-”

“Just go, Vette.”

The bridge clanged under his boots as he made his way over the depths of the canyon, a warm breeze rising up from beneath him as the rocks slowly gave off the warmth they’d accrued over the day. The start of the field was well lit, the path to her ship brightly illuminated by perimetre sensors, but the corner she sat in by the pond was draped in the growing shadows of the evening. Her white dress stood out starkly in the gloom, and as he drew closer he realised she was lying down, not sitting up. His heart rate picked up for a moment, before he saw her stir; she wasn’t unconscious, or dead.

“Go away,” she said hoarsely, her voice so thoroughly exhausted that he couldn’t help but wince. 

He stopped several feet away, not intruding on her space and her grief any more than was necessary. “We were concerned,” he began, but she snorted weakly. 

“It’s a bit late for anyone to express concern over me or my feelings,” she said.

Arcann clasped his hands behind his back, for lack of anything else to do with them. He could see a dark lump in the grass nearby that- now that his eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom- he assumed was the remains of the rycrit calf. “Are you alright?” he asked politely.

“No.” 

“Do you need to talk about it?”

“No.” 

He closed his eyes, scrambling desperately for something to say. “Was the ritual at least satisfactory?” 

She snorted. “We were married for nearly nine years,” she said, “but I only have memories to fill three.” 

She didn’t continue, and he was left at a loss as to what to say. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said gruffly. 

“Go away, Arcann.”

He couldn’t say why he did it, afterwards; there was nothing sensible about it, nothing logical. “I know what it’s like,” he blurted out. “The grief, I mean. To lose the person who means the most to you in the world.” 

She was quiet for a very long time, and he thought she might mean to ignore him entirely; eventually there was a rustling sound, and she sat up slowly. He saw her wince as she did so, and he could see the dark stains on the front of her gown- whether it was blood or whether it was Rylothian soil, he couldn’t say in this darkness. She held her hands in her lap, palms facing upwards, and she stared down at them as if they were monstrous. “With all due respect, Arcann,” she said quietly, “you don’t know a damn thing about me, or what I’m going through.” 

“Then _tell_ me. Tell _someone_. It only hurts you to carry that pain and that grief inside of you without release.”

“You expect me to trust you with the most vulnerable, painful parts of myself, when less than a year ago you were still set on killing me?” 

“You saw me in the same position and saw a person you wanted to help,” he said, unable to say why it was so important to him that she accept his aid. “Now, all I know is that not a damn person in that building back there knows you well enough to even consider that you’d be hurting, and that...” He swallowed. “I know what that- feels like.” 

She was quiet again for a long time, and he was beginning to take her silence as an answer when she finally spoke again. “I don’t know if I loved him enough.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Torian,” she said, even though that was obvious. “He was... I don’t know. He was wonderful. But it always felt like I wasn’t in as deep as he was. Like I wasn’t loving him right, or something. Always felt like he loved me more than I loved him.”

 _Oh._ “Do you think it’s just guilt, about what happened?”

She snorted. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” She shrugged, the gesture almost swallowed up by the night. “If I loved him enough, I wouldn’t have gotten caught up with Koth, now, would I?” 

“I don’t presume to judge how people conduct themselves in their personal relationships.” 

“That’s a wordy way of saying ‘ _ain’t none of my business_ ’,” she said. She breathed out loudly, a drawn out sigh that seemed to be more about pushing back a fresh round of tears than actually expressing annoyance. “And now he’s gone, and the last thing he did was tell me off for clinging to hope. I told him he could hold out, that I believed in him, and he...” She broke off abruptly, her head bowing as she struggled not to weep. 

She was so painfully, extraordinarily vulnerable- broken in a way he would never have imagined when they were enemies. She’d seemed indomitable, unwavering, unflinching. Exactly the sort of person capable of turning his father’s head. But she was almost horrifyingly mortal, as she sat crying in a field over the death of her husband, so consumed with guilt that she blamed herself for not loving him right. 

He crouched before her, and she started violently when he put a hand on her shoulder; he tried not to feel bitter about the way she flinched at the touch of him. “If anything,” he said quietly, “he only said that because he wanted to spare you the heartbreak his death would cause you.”

“You don’t know that,” she whispered.

“I was there, Commander,” he said, stuttering briefly over her title when his first instinct was to call her by name instead. They weren’t close enough for that. “I heard what he said, and the way he spoke to you. He loved you, and he wanted to protect you for as long as he could- even from your own relentless optimism, when he knew there was no hope left for him.” 

She stared at him in the darkness, and then her face slowly crumbled. He suddenly found himself kneeling before a woman sobbing into his arms, her head slowly coming to rest on his chest as she collapsed against him. It wasn’t a delicate storm of weeping, either, but desperate ugly sounds that wracked her body and made her shudder and choke, and as alarmed as he was by the abrupt turn of events, he awkwardly tried to put his arms around her, patting her hesitantly on the back. 

“I can’t do this,” she stammered, shaking violently.

“Do you want to run away?”

That pulled her up short. “What?” she asked, leaning back to look up at him, her cheeks shining from the tears. 

He swallowed nervously, not quite sure why he’d said it. “I asked if you wanted to run away,” he said hesitantly. “I can... I know places where you can go. It’s how I stayed out of sight of the Alliance, and Vaylin for so long.” 

She couldn’t have looked more confused or more stunned if he’d suddenly sprouted lekku of his own. “What... why would you offer that?” she said, her voice small and vulnerable. 

“Because I know what it’s like to be so consumed by your grief that nothing else makes sense anymore, and to desperately want to get away from the wants and needs of a thousand other people.” 

She didn’t look like the commander of a cross faction alliance, powerful enough to topple empires and strongarm in an era of galactic peace- she looked like a very frightened, lonely woman. Grief made all of them equal, in the end. 

She stared at him for a long time, and despite the weight of her gaze burning at him, he didn’t look away. Finally, she took a quiet breath. “I’ll stay,” she said. “But... thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Comman- ah, Kol’aya.” 

The silence between them abruptly became awkward, and she glanced down quickly, away from his face. “Oh- goddess, shit, I’ve stained your shirt-”

He found himself laughing. “It’s alright, really,” he said, pretending to dust off the marks. “A lesson in humility never hurt anyone. Least of all me.” 

“I’m sorry, Arcann.”

“It’s alright,” he repeated, leaning back onto his knees. She looked a dreadful sight, honestly, and he couldn’t even see her properly in the darkness. “Come on, surely you must be getting hungry- unless, um... you needed more time?” 

She glanced almost guiltily down to her hands, to where he could see the ten red rings on her hands. One on each finger. “I’ve got plenty of time,” she said quietly. “All I’ve got left anymore is time.” 

He could relate to that. 

He climbed clumsily to his feet, and then held out a hand to help her rise. The rings on her right hand clacked loudly against his metallic fingers on the left, and she laughed awkwardly. “Sorry,” she said again. “That’s gonna take some getting used to.”

The words were out of his mouth before his brain could catch up to tell him not to say it. “What, holding my hand, or wearing the rings?”

She froze.

“I meant the rings, I was- it was a joke, I was trying to make you laugh-”

“It’s alright,” she said, even as she withdrew her hands from his. “I just... I don’t think I’ve got it in me for jokes right now.” 

“I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she said; she looked so utterly exhausted, like she’d just came out the end of a year long illness. “I mean... thank you. For coming to check on me, I mean. And for listening.” 

“Thank you for giving me the opportunity to be here at all.” 

She smiled hesitantly at him. “Friends, then?” 

Two small words shouldn’t make his heart leap like that. “Friends,” he said in agreement. “And if you need someone to, uh, talk to again? I’d be honoured if you’d trust me.” 

Her smile widened, a little wobbly and her eyes evidently bloodshot even in the near dark of the field. “I’d like that,” she said. “Friends.”


End file.
